Маргарет Олифант: Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3

“What are the joy bells a-ringing for, Simon?” said an old woman, coming briskly out to the door of one of the pretty cottages in the pretty village of Arden, on a pleasant morning of early summer, when all the leaves were young, and the first freshness of the year was over the world. “There’s ne’er a one married as I knows on, and it aint Whitsuntide, nor Holmfirth fair, nor–”

“It’s the young Squire, stoopid,” said the old clerk, gruffly, leaning his arms upon the little paling of the tiny garden and looking at her. “He’s come home.”

What he really did say was “he’s coom whoam;” but the reader will be so kind as take it for granted that Simon Molyneaux was an old Lancashire man, and talked accordingly, without giving a pen not too familiar with the dialect the trouble of putting in all the o’s that are necessary. Simon said coom, and he said loove, and moother; but as there is no moral meaning in the double letter, let us consent to leave it out.

“The young Squire!” said the old woman, with a start.

She was a tidy fresh old woman, with cheeks of a russet colour, half brown half red, yet soft, despite all their wrinkles—cheeks that children laid their little faces up to without feeling any difference of texture; and eyes which had stolen back during these years deeper into their sockets, but yet were bright and full of suppressed sunshine. She had a little shawl pinned over her print gown, and a great white apron, which shone in the sun, and made the chief light in the little picture. Simon’s rugged countenance looking at her was all brown, with a deep dusky red on the tops of the cheekbones; his face was as full of cross-hatching as if he had been an old print. His eyes were deeper than were hers, but still at the bottom of the wrinkled caves they abode in had a spark of light in each of them. In short, there was sufficient resemblance between them still to show that Simon and Sarah were brother and sister. A young woman of four and twenty came to the door of the next cottage at the sound of his voice, and opening it, went in again, as if her duty was done. She was Simon’s daughter and housekeeper, who was not fond of gossip, and the two kindred households were next door to each other. It was a very pretty village, much encouraged to keep itself tidy, and to cultivate flowers, and do everything that is proper in its condition of life, by the young lady at the Hall. The houses had been improved, but in an unobtrusive way. They were not painfully white-washed, but showed here and there a gleam of red brick in a thin place. The roses and the honeysuckles were not always neatly trained, and there was even an old shawl thrust into a broken pane in the window of Sally Timms, who was so much trouble to Miss Arden with her untidy ways. Old Simon had nothing but wallflower and southernwood (which was called lad’s love in that region), and red and white daisies in his garden. But next door, if you came at the proper season, you might see picottees that were exhibited at the Holmfirth flower show, and floury auriculas, such as were the height of the fashion in the floral world a good many years ago. In short there was just that mixture of perfection and imperfection which kept the village of Arden a natural spontaneous village, instead of an artificial piece of luxury, cultivated like any other ornament, in consequence of the very close vicinity of the Hall gates.

“The young Squire!” said old Sarah again, who had been shaking her head all the time we have taken to interpolate this bit of description; and she did it still more emphatically now when she repeated her words, “Poor lad—poor lad! Eh, to think the joy bells should be rung in Arden Church along o’ him ! He never came home yet that I hadn’t a good cry for’t afore the day was done. Poor lad!”

“Thee needn’t cry no more,” said Simon, “along of him. He’s come to his own, and ne’er one within twenty miles to say him nay. He came home last night, when folks were a’ abed; but he’s as bright as a May morning to look at him now.”

“He was allays bright,” said Sarah, wiping her eyes with her apron, an action which disturbed the whole picture, breaking up the lights, “when he was kepp like the lowest in the house, and ’ad the nose snapped off his face, he’d cry one minute and laugh the next, that’s what he’d do. He never was long down, wasn’t Mr. Edgar. Though where he got that, and his light hair, and them dancing eyes of his, it’s none o’ us that can say.”

“It was off his mother he got ’em, as was natural,” said the old clerk. “I saw her when old Master he brought her home first, and she was as fair as fair. But, Squire or no Squire, I’m going to my breakfast. Them bell-ringing boys they’re at the Arden Arms already, drinking the Squire’s sovereign, the fools, instead of laying it up for a rainy day. If they had the rheumatiz as bad as me they’d know what it was to have a penny laid by; but I don’t know what young folks is coming to, I don’t,” said Simon, opening his own gate, and hobbling towards the open door. He had a large white handkerchief loosely tied about his shrivelled brown throat, and an old black coat, which had been an evening coat of the old Squire’s in former days. Simon preferred swallowtail coats, chiefly because he thought they were more dignified, and became his position; but partly also because experience had taught him that coats which were only worn in the evening by their original proprietor had a great deal more wear in them than those which the Squire or the Rector walked about in all day.

Sarah went in also to her own cottage, where for the moment she was all alone. She spread down her white apron, and smoothed out the creases which she had made when she dried her eyes; but, notwithstanding, her eyes required to be dried again. “Poor lad,” she said at intervals, as she “tidied” her already tidy room, and swept some imperceptible dust into the fireplace. The fire was made up. The cat sat winking by it. The kettle feebly murmured on the hob. It was not the moment for that kettle to put itself in evidence. It had made the breakfast, and had helped in the washing of the solitary cup and saucer, and it was only just now that it should retire into the background till the afternoon, when tea was again to be thought of. Its mistress was somewhat in the same condition. She walked round the room two or three times, trying apparently to find some piece of active work which required to be done, and poked into all the corners. “I done my scouring only yesterday,” she said to herself in a regretful and plaintive tone; but, after a little interval, added energetically, “and I cannot settle down to plain sewing, not to-day.” She said this as if somebody had commanded her to take to her plain sewing, which lay all ready in a basket on the table, and the command had roused her to sudden irritation. But it was only the voice of duty which gave that order. Even after this indignant protest, however, Sarah took her work, and put in three stitches, and then picked them carefully out again. “I think I’m a losing of my seven senses,” she said to herself plaintively. “It aint no use a struggling.” And with that the old woman rose, tied on her big old bonnet, and set out through Arden village in the sunshine on her way to Arden Hall.

To see that pretty rural place, you would never have supposed it was within a dozen miles of the great, vulgar, bustling town of Liverpool—nay, within half a dozen miles of the straggling, dreary outskirts of that big beehive. But yet so it was; from the tower of Arden Church you could see the mouth of the Mersey, with all its crowds of ships; and, but for the haughty determination of the old Squire to grant no building leases on his land, and the absence of railway communication consequent thereupon, no doubt Arden would have been by this time full of villas, and would have sent a stream of commercial gentlemen every morning out of its quiet freshness by dint of a ten o’clock train.